Riding in the Rain

I don't know what it was, but the other night while there was a bit of drizzle in the air, my journey seemed a lot faster. It felt like the bit of rain on the roads made the surface like a smooth track and it was as if I was flowing across the tarmac.

As others walked home shielding themselves from above, I sliced my way through the moist air without a care that as getting hit by rain drops.

So instead of battling against the weather, cycling uses it to it's advantage.

Let's see how it goes as it gets colder.

Good Value Cycling Accessories at Sports Direct

Cycle stuff can be expensive, so In the spirit of posting deals on cheap cycling gear from fellow bloggers, I thought I'd do my bit by telling you good people of the deals at sports direct ( I am not an employee, or related to anybody there, blah blah blah).

As the weather has now decided to act it's season, I was in need of a pair of cycling gloves. Instead of shelling out at least 20 quid at Evans, a friend pointed me down to sports direct where they have great deals on cycling gear. I picked up a pair of Dunlop gloves for £7.99, bargain really.

All their goods are not 5 star quality, but how can you go wrong with a floor pump for £3.99 ?

They have a decent range of cycling clothing too, with long sleeve cycling shirts for £10.99 looking like a good deal.

Take a further look at the following sections:
http://www.sportsdirect.com/cycling/cycling-accessories
http://www.sportsdirect.com/cycling/cycling-clothing

Police Cycle Marking - Today at Blackfriars

If you have cycled to the city today, get down to Blackfriars Bridge between 4 and 7pm. The Met Police are offering free cycle security marking and are giving advice on bike registration. This helps if your cycle is stolen, and the police recover it, they are then able to trace it back to you.

More info : http://www.met.police.uk/transport/cycle_marking.html

Following the rules

Last month I was not a cyclist and like a lot of the general public I didn't really understand why so many cyclists jump red lights and ignore other rules of the road. But over the last few days I seem to have acquired the urge to cross red lights, and ride across pedestrian crossings and other road rule breaking behaviour.

When I'm at a traffic light junction , I start thinking if I can see that no cars are coming from either side and I feel it is safe to jump the red,  which will give me a bit of a headstart over white man van who thinks he's playing mario kart and wants to knock me over with a red shell, why not do it?

It's kind of the feeling when you're driving on the motorway, you know the speed limit is 70 mph, but you don't see any harm in doing 80. Everybody else seems to be doing it and you don't feel any unsafer by going this little bit faster.

Yes both things are wrong and you are putting your own and other peoples safety at risk by basically breaking the rules. But I want to make the point that it's not just cyclists who think they can circumvent the highway code on occasions,  those on four wheels do the same but just in different ways.

Also read:
Respecting the Red on The Trusty Steed.
the myth of the red light jumping cyclist on ibikelondon
The Highway Code : Rules for cyclists 

What Tube Strike?

Today was my first experience of riding in whilst a tube strike was going on. It felt so good not working out how to get in via Bus or Overground trains and then have to experience the ensuing crush. Only downer is that I don't have an excuse to work from home.

The roads in North London didn't seem any busier this morning, but this was around 7.15 before the real rush. But when I did get closer to the city there seem to be a lot of traffic on certain roads. Luckily my route was free flowing and largely unaffected. I heard from others that it was a lot more difficult on the bigger roads in town.

There were probably a few more bikes on the road too, but not a noticeable number. Maybe as I'm still a newbie, it doesn't make much difference to me.

Hope all your journeys were fine too.

Back on the tube for a day

After more than a week of straight cycling to and from work, I had to get the tube yesterday and what a joy it was.


On the way in there was a problem on the line and the train crawled a long for about 20 mins. Due to the problems the people traffic was worse than usual so I could forget about finding a seat.It  ended up taking more than 20 mins longer to get in compared to if I was cycling.
The way home was worse. It was chucking down and even with an umbrella I was so wet. When I got to the station I realised I didn't have my oyster card with me so I had to shell out 4 quid to get home!  Then as I raced to get on to the tube, the doors shut on me and it was like two skinheads walloping me from either side. Ok maybe it was my fault to try a jump on while the door closing beeps sounded.
Anyways, both journeys reminded me how much more I enjoy cycling in and further convinced me to perservere as the cold sets in.

TFL Cycle Planner Route to Google My Maps on your Android phone

5-Nov-2010 - Since this post , I've discovered CycleStreets.net which offers a much superior cycle route planner than the tfl website. The below instructions can be used to export a route from cyclestreets to your android phone. Once cyclestreets has generated a route, click on "Fly this route on Google Earth(KML Export)" and save the kml file. Then follow from step 5 below.

As mentioned in a post last week "Advice to new commuter cyclists" , I used the tfl cycle planner to find my route between home and work and then saved that route to my Android mobile phone. This helped me out so much on my first few journeys, when I wasn't sure where I was going.

So this is how to do it:

1. Search for your route on the tfl cycle planner site.

2. Once you have found your route and it is displayed on the map, click on "Upload to GPS device".

3. Save the gpx file to somewhere on your computer.

4. On the site GPS Visualizer , convert the gpx file you just saved to kml. Select your file in File #1 and change the output file type to kml.

5. Save to kml file to somewhere on your computer.

6. On Google Maps log into your google account and select My Maps. Click on Import.

7. Select the kml file you saved in step 5 and click on Upload from file.

8. Wait a few moments and your route should now appear on Google Maps and listed under My Maps.

9.  Now on your Android phone , open up the Maps application, hit the layers button, then from the menu hit the More Layers button. Select My Maps, and the map we saved earlier should be available in the list. Select this and wait a few moments and you should see your route on your phone. For more info on google layers see the youtube video below:



If you have any trouble , leave a comment and I'll try to help out.